There will be major disruptions to passenger and freight rail services north of Newcastle today, as a four day shut-down of the Hunter Valley track gets underway.
Trains will not operate on the main northern line from 6:00am (AEST) today until Saturday morning, to allow for major upgrade work and maintenance aimed at increasing the reliability of the network for both passenger and freight trains.

MELBOURNE'S new rail operator, Metro, says a poorly maintained train caused a fault that brought an entire suburban line to a halt yesterday, disrupting the morning commute of thousands.

In only its second day running the city's trains, Metro had another bad day of cancellations, with 38 trains not running, most due to the Glen Waverley line breakdown. Many more services were badly delayed across the network.

The State Opposition said the incident proved it hadn't been Connex's fault that Melbourne's trains were unreliable, but a lack of investment by the Government in better trains for the city.

A leading transport organisation has come up with what it says is a simple plan that would give Sydney commuters a metro rail system within eight years and save the New South Wales Government billions of dollars.

Islamists from the North Caucasus have claimed responsibility for the deadly bombing last week of a Russian passenger train, according to a statement posted on Wednesday on a website linked to Chechen rebels.

"This operation was prepared and executed along with other acts of sabotage, planned from the start of this year and successfully carried out against a set of strategically important sites in Russia, on the orders of Caucasus Emir Dokku Umarov," the statement on the website KavkazCenter.com said.

Just $10 million of a promised $100 million outlay on the Frankston railway line will be spent in the next 12 months, and some of it will be spent on fixing other lines in Melbourne's west.
The Napthine government last week committed $100 million over the next three years to improving the Frankston line, which runs through four marginal seats in Melbourne's south-east that swung its way at the 2010 election.
But the first chunk of that money – $10 million in 2013-14, budget papers show – will also be spent on improving the Werribee and Williamstown lines.

Most of the $3 billion the Gillard government has committed towards building a new rail tunnel in MelbourneTesting! would not begin to flow until next decade, suggesting train commuters face several years of worsening overcrowding no matter which party wins the federal election.As federal Labor and the Victorian Coalition sparred over when work on the multibillion-dollar MelbourneTesting! Metro rail tunnel might proceed, state Public Transport Minister Terry Mulder told a parliamentary hearing $2 billion of the promised federal outlay was scheduled to be delivered after 2019.

Their greatest concerns are dangerous station car parks, a lack of staff on trains and security at stations, according to the Government's latest customer satisfaction survey. The results, obtained under freedom-of-information laws, have prompted a loose coalition of social workers, politicians and the rail workers union to urge urgent action to protect passengers.

Investigations are continuing into a near miss involving a passenger train at Cootamundra on November 12 this year.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau's (ATSB) preliminary report says the XPT driver received a signal to proceed, but he saw the last wagon of a freight train obstructing his path and used the emergency brake.

The Florida House of Representatives passed a bill Dec. 7 that would pave the way for Orlando’s SunRail project, as well as a high-speed rail project connecting Orlando, Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville.

After an 84-25 vote backing the rail package, the measure was set to be hear by a Senate commitee Monday afternoon and could hit the floor as early as Tuesday, said Jaryn Emhof, spokeswoman for Senate President Jeff Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, who has been trying to rally support.

A report on aviation from the House of Commons Transport Committee says high speed rail links to major British airports are 'imperative'. However, it warns that new high speed lines cannot completely replace domestic flights in the UK.

Iron ore miner Fortescue Metals Group Ltd is set to bolster its case for access to Rio Tinto Ltd's Pilbara rail network, The Australian Financial Review reports.

According to the newspaper, Fortescue is set to announce an upgrade to its estimated resources at its Solomon project, which will underscore the importance of train access when the miner returns to the Competition Tribunal this week.

Queenslanders will be given priority to buy into a new publicly-listed rail giant being set up by the state government.

Premier Anna Bligh on Tuesday told reporters the government would restructure the state's rail system to create two new entities: a publicly listed company to be known as QR National and a government-owned corporation to be known as QR.

LATE last month, as train operator Connex came to the tail-end of its contract to run Melbourne's train network, it made a curious announcement.

After years trumpeting its performance record on a decaying network, it said it had not met its October punctuality target and would follow the standard practice of compensating monthly and yearly ticket holders with free daily tickets.

CountryLink says it is satisfied with investigations so far into a near miss involving the XPT train at Cootamundra last month.

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau's (ATSB) initial report says the train, carrying about 150 people, almost hit a fully-laden goods train because of a problem with the installation of new signalling.

A British court has jailed two young men for setting fire to a stranger's beard as he slept on a train.

The judge on Wednesday condemned the "cowardly and callous actions" by Dean Hardy, 20, and Aedan Palmer, 19, in the attack last December that left 22-year-old Luke Kennedy with severe burns to his lips, ears and cheeks.

During the trial, the court had heard that Hardy and Palmer had each drunk about 10 cans of beer before they boarded the train with two younger boys and sat down opposite Kennedy, who was sleeping in his seat.

MELBOURNE'S much-loved icon, Flinders Street Station, celebrates its centenary next month, but the building remains underused and partly dilapidated despite repeated attempts to have it returned to its former glory, say lobbyists calling for it to become an arts-design hub.

Jenny Davies, author of Beyond the Facade, history of the station, says the site has been put in the too-hard basket by successive governments. It is sorely neglected, she said, despite having a rich history of public use and being one of the finest examples of early 20th century architecture in the country.

Detailed environmental studies will be carried out as part of a $182 million project to construct new train stabling facilities near Emu Plains railway station, Penrith State Labor MP Karyn Paluzzano has announced.

MELBOURNE, they say, adores its trams. If true, this can only be some bizarre variant of Stockholm syndrome, in which hostages come to identify with, and even love, their captors.

Far from being the cheery and iconic symbol of our city, trams are the fatty deposits clogging its arteries. Trams are barely mobile roadblocks that risk the safety of all who board them, and their tracks are a menace to all that goes on two wheels. Were Melbourne a cat, trams would be the gross, slimy furballs it coughed up when it was choking.

Well, maybe they're not quite that bad. But consider this: in the time it takes to get to work by tram, I can have ridden to the office, showered, changed, bought a coffee and written three paragraphs about how much I hate trams. You have to wonder about any form of motorised transport that's slower than a bicycle.

According to the most recent data on Yarra Trams' website, the average speed of a tram in Melbourne is 16 km/h, dropping to 10 km/h in the city centre. By contrast, a fast walk is about 6 km/h, Melbourne's buses average 23.1 km/h and cars clock in at 43 km/h around town. (They did in 2006, anyway, according to the City of Melbourne Transport Strategy. It's been a bad few years for traffic since.)

The beggars aren't cheap, either: the State Government this year committed $1 billion to add 50 trams to the fleet by 2012. It's worth noting that industry sources believe the trams themselves will cost about $5 million each to build, which seems to leave a lot of spare change for fuzzy dice and seat covers.